Sep
11th
2018
Points of Canon: S8x25-26 - School Raze · 10:19am Sep 11th, 2018
Time for the grand finale.
- Chronology markers: School of Friendship is the focus of the episode, Spike has wings. No other in-season markers appear, though, which actually permits some episodes to float out of Season 8 into the future if required.
- Derpy is still wearing the brown UPS uniform, and so far, most mailponies were seen wearing it in Season 8. Are they finally standardizing? Incidentally, this makes the second season finale in a row that starts with Derpy delivering a letter. There’s a story in that for someone.
- Cozy Glow picks up the three letters Derpy dropped – however, Derpy slammed into the school coat of arms because she was staring at one letter she was holding in her hooves. Assuming that this one was addressed to the school seems reasonable, but she dropped a total of four letters, three of which could be addressed anywhere at all, considering that her saddlebags are still full when she leaves. Cozy Glow just picks up three letters floating down, and the fourth is mysteriously gone.
- Cozy Glow encounters a dropped juice packet. Setting aside the question of who dropped it – the new girl, probably, but we don’t know – the previous time we saw such an object was in Honest Apple, I think. It is notable because it requires aseptic packaging technology which didn’t take off in our world until 1960s. You can’t make them with just cardboard, in any case. Notice also that Cozy Glow drops the packet and the straw into two separate bins – ponies have recycling. Notice also that she drops at least one item into the wrong bin – neither the packet nor the straw belong with food waste.
- The new girl has a plan of the school grounds, which would be very useful if it was guaranteed to conform to reality. It’s notable that the school has such a thing at all on its handouts, however.
- Silverstream is solving a crossword puzzle in the library. Libraries generally frown on doing it with library newspapers…
- “A seven-letter word for ‘teamwork.’ Have you tried ‘synergy?’” Notably, synergy does not have anything to do with teamwork, as it can occur between forces that have no agency, for example.
“The mail’s here already? What time is it?! I’m late for my class’s field trip to Cloudsdale!”
- The clock is entirely senseless, as it assumes 8 hours in a full revolution, which clocks in Equestria sometimes do and sometimes do not. Notice that fundamentally, clocks with 8 hours per revolution and 12 hours per revolution are compatible: in a 24-hour day, 8-hour clocks do three revolutions while 12-hour clocks do two. Having two standards for clock faces would be confusing – even one is confusing – but it’s possible ponies make do. Unfortunately, it means we don’t know what time it is, because sure as hell it isn’t 05:00. 13:00?…
- Funny how nopony came to fetch her before that. Didn’t anyone look forward for the trip?…
- Twilight did have her bags packed and for some reason, hidden in a closet.
- “I also color-coded your teaching schedule by friendship element and cataloged all the magical artifacts in the school.” Now, I understand why the schedule might not be color-coded already – there’s precious little need to do it in the first place – but why weren’t the artifacts cataloged well before then?
- “You’re like my right-hoof pony!” The very fact that ponies have such an idiom at all implies most ponies are right-hoofed.
- “The Pegasus Weather Factory! Every drop of rain or flake of snow from Cloudsdale comes from there.” With this turn of phrase, Cloudsdale only has exactly one weather factory, but it probably isn’t the only weather factory in the nation.
- “Wow! I’ve never stood on a cloud before!” Changelings do not have native cloudwalking, otherwise, Ocellus wouldn’t have escaped doing this. Starlight likewise confirms this.
- Notably, when the cloudwalking spell fails, all the natural fliers in the audience immediately take off for some reason, including those of them that do have native cloudwalking…
- “I even had to use my hooves to coif my tail!” Rarity is entirely incapable of doing it with her hooves, which is kind of strange, knowing how she usually sews. Also notice the bow on the base of her tail which she does not normally wear.
- “Um, didn’t we learn in class about a creature that eats magic? Ter, Tee… Tir-something?” Considering that Tirek’s attack itself happened at most a couple years ago, making mistakes in his name is quite strange and should have resulted in a raised eyebrow: everypony in this room should have lived through it, including Cozy Glow.
- “Thanks. I’ve never had a letter get stuck before.” Dragonflame mail is also affected, but pegasus flight remains untouched.
- “Throughout our city, ponies have been reporting tales of their magic failing. Spells going wrong. Potions not working.” And yet pegasi have no problems flying, and Spike doesn’t have flying issues either.
- “It’s the same in my kingdom. The Crystal Heart seems safe for now, but I worry if this continues.” Notice how even Cadance uses “empire” and “kingdom” interchangeably.
- “Letter for the princess from Star Swirl the Bearded!” This guy is wearing a Canterlot mailpony uniform instead.
- “On the second day, creatures will lose their magic abilities.” Pegasi don’t count as creatures according to Star Swirl, they continue flying throughout the episode.
- “When the sun sets on the third day, the magic in our world will be gone forever!” Big deal, just keep the sun up until you figure out the problem.
- “Not without us, you wo— Wait. Did you say ‘we?’” “I’ve finally learned that it’s okay to count on your friends for help.” This is, frankly, a non sequitur from Twilight and Rarity at this point in the series.
“Be careful. Tartarus has changed since you were there. It now holds many dangerous creatures, and you won’t be able to rely on your magic.”
- According to Luna, Twilight has visited the inside of Tartarus before. We know she had to visit the gates in It’s About Time, but we didn’t know if she went inside or not. Luna thinks she did.
- Likewise according to Luna, it had no or much fewer dangerous creatures at that time, which is pretty bogus if you ask me.
Who wrote that scene? It’s senseless.
- “Starlight can’t stand mustard.” Good to know.
- “She was, but she left me this note.” The fake note is still signed with Starlight’s cutie mark – but rather than a more common full-color representation which has to be a sticker, this one is just done in red ink.
- The road to the Gates of Tartarus looks like no scenery seen previously, we still have no idea where exactly that is – we just know it can’t be very far, because of the Cerberus incident in It’s About Time.
- “I have had it with these horrible flies!” As previously observed, insects do not count as creatures for most ponies, and swatting them is perfectly OK.
“They must’ve gone bad without magic to keep them cold.”
- Ponies routinely use enchanted cold storage for bags. We very rarely, if ever, see anything resembling an electric refrigerator, so this might be the go-to solution for cold storage.
- Wouldn’t permanently enchanted bags count as magic items?
- That’s awfully fast for a cupcake to go bad, in any case! Did Twilight bring any food with her the last time?
- Spike is mysteriously nauseous at the sight of the cupcake, when in Applebuck Season he would eat Baked Bads out of a trash bin.
- “We don’t need magic to go on a little hike.” It’s interesting how Pinkie’s hair gets wet, straightens out, and then re-curls even before they reach the cover of the tree canopy in the very next frame.
- “Granny’s ‘Apple Core No-Bite-No-More!’ That’ll keep the flies off.” A fly repellent would surely be a useful thing for farm work, but a foul-smelling one would be more trouble than it’s worth for people with coats, and I’m not sure one made out of apple cores is possible.
- “I can’t stop that storm by myself, but I can still help!” Even the less natural aspects of pegasus magic remain entirely unaffected by the drain: There’s no mundane way to make a cloud stop rain.
“Cozy Glow gave our class tickets to a Sapphire Shores concert in Ponyville tonight.”
- Sapphire Shores is still active! I’ve been wondering what happened to her.
- Sapphire Shores does concerts in Ponyville now, while previously, Canterlot was the smallest she’d go. She certainly isn’t doing all that well.
- Cozy Glow is using a firefly lantern, something we haven’t seen for quite a while. Is there a particular reason to use one this time?
- “This is the only door to Tartarus. The good news is the seal isn’t broken, so we know Tirek didn’t escape.” Notice the total absence of guards outside. You’d think the last escape taught them something, but I guess not.
“Last time I was here, I had to use magic to get in.”
- This time, Twilight reasons that nobody got out because the seal isn’t broken, but last time she had to use magic to open it, which implies that the seal was broken, but the door was locked. The only way this works is when an open door automatically re-locks, which is what we see once it gets opened. So what does the seal look like, then?…
- We don’t know for sure if Twilight did have special authorization to open the door the last time or not. She could have received it by dragonfire mail, for example. However, this necessarily implies one of the two: Either any suitably powerful unicorn can open the door willy-nilly, which is bogus, or such an authorization can be sent by dragonfire mail.
“The Key of Unfettered Entrance!” is a presumably unique magic item that can “open any door.” Good to know.
- Also, a strange thing to have lying around and to keep within reach of children like Cozy, why does Twilight have it in the first place?
- It’s also very, very strange that the “key” has exactly the same shape as the indentation on this particular, but no other doorway. How do you use it if it doesn’t fit? Put it against the lock and hammer it into the keyhole until the lock breaks? That opens any door alright…
- “I guess it only works once.” Did it always? Didn’t anypony try it before on something else?
Tartarus is stupidly small and contains somewhere on the scale of 30-40 cages on camera, in which we can observe:
- A Tirek.
- A cockatrice.
- A chimera.
- A bugbear.
- A yeti.
- A manticore.
- A few other miscellaneous and frankly, very minor threats, that don’t look like they could possibly compare to Tirek in terms of expected potential harm caused.
And no personnel to feed them or sanitation facilities of any kind. What the aerial intercourse?
- “Don’t look at it! It’ll turn you to stone!” A cockatrice’s gaze does not work on creatures that can’t see it.
- “Star Swirl said that would happen on the second day.” Tartarus is much less of a pocket space than usually believed: Otherwise, there is no sensible way the magic draining effect would ever reach here. Notice also that Tartarus does not itself confer a magic draining effect, so there’s no reasonable way these flimsy cages would keep half of their inhabitants in – and they’re not themselves magic-proof as we see later in the episode.
- “As of now, I am headstallion.” Notice, not “headmaster” nor “principal”.
- “You’re a very good guard dog. Yes, you are. But, um, we were wondering if we could get by to check on Tirek.” Fluttershy’s universal translator ability remains unaffected by magic drain.
- “You don’t think they’re the reason magic is disappearing, do you?” Neighsay would have to be utterly insane to believe the Student Six could somehow cause a mass magic drain across the entire nation, unless he knew of a specific way to make it happen that they were capable of using. Yet apparently he does believe this, and believes merely expelling the students is enough to stop this. What the aerial intercourse?…
- Neighsay’s seal is quite a versatile magic item: the sealing spell he used on the door of the School in School Daze is also capable of sealing a group of creatures. Notice that every time he uses it, it appears to require his horn anyway – this isn’t an item usable by non-unicorns.
- “From now on, this school is pony-only! As nature intended.” Nature. Really.
- Apple Bloom’s room window is ungodly resilient: After that many apples, you would expect a crack. Is it acrylic by any chance?…
- “Sorry. I ran out of apples.” Notice the cow, who is for an unclear reason outside and not sleeping. What is she doing in the shot, I have no idea.
- Notice that the Carrot Building has lights on. Someone lives in there, and it can’t be the Apples. Who? Because according to the Apple Family Reunion, it’s still part of the Apple land.
- “Do mulberries have seeds?” Sandbar isn’t sure.
“We’re pen pals. Each letter had so many questions about draining magic.”
- So Tirek, while in Tartarus, had regular communication by mail with Cozy Glow. Uncensored and unmonitored. Regular communication and no chamberpot. What the aerial intercourse.
- On the other hand, this makes him a prime candidate for the Other Sith: There’s no reason he couldn’t have done the same with Starlight. Later on he says “I doubt this Starlight stands a chance!” implying that he doesn’t know who she is, but there’s a lot of ways to explain that away.
- But wait. This means mailponies get in somehow, don’t they? Wouldn’t ordering a newspaper subscription be the best way to get out, then? And how did Tirek get the money for stamps?
- But more wait. If Tirek knows how to rid the entire Equestria of magic, without being detected at all – because Cozy Glow isn’t detected or located, her plan is discovered by entirely non-magical means! – what exactly could have possibly stopped him from doing the same the first time he escaped? It would have been a far superior method to consume all magic in Equestria to hunting down every single pony personally.
Cozy Glow is the first pegasus on record pulling off what appears to be a ritual magic spell, from scratch, with no obvious unicorn assistance.
- Notice the magic circle, something previously shown in pony magic only once – in a hypothetical flashback in Celestial Advice.
- The actual power source for the spell is still the various artifacts first observed in A Matter of Principals, but at least this implies that given a suitably charged object, through the use of ritual, anypony can cast at least certain kinds of spells.
“All this magic needs time to drain from Equestria before my vortex sucks it to another realm. Three days can sure seem like forever, huh? You know, you ponies got it all wrong.” This is a somewhat ambiguous statement, but:
- It is likely that Cozy Glow is not originally a pony, as throughout the episode she would say “we ponies” but now it’s “you ponies.”
- It is likewise likely that Cozy Glow is not originally from Equestria, otherwise, what would be the point of sucking the magic out elsewhere. Remember how she pretended that Tirek eating magic was something she learned in class, rather than experienced herself or saw other ponies experience?
Is she a pony-transformed HiE?… We never find out for sure – this admission is never brought up in the subsequent episode.
“I’m not usually a fan of ponies, but draining your precious world of magic so she could trap the six of you was inspiring!”
- Tirek believes Cozy Glow is originally a pony, but what does he know.
- Tirek believes that draining the entire world of magic was primarily done to trap the Mane 6. He may or may not be correct, but in any case, this is the intention Cozy communicated, and he was aware of it all along.
“These creatures might be losing their magical powers, but there’s still a magic that makes up what they are. Maybe we can borrow some of that.”
- What Twilight essentially does here is take the magic that melds chimerae’s component creatures together and gives special powers to other creatures, even when those special powers are not currently working.
- Which presents the question “why the hell wasn’t this done before putting them in Tartarus” – because then, there would be no reason to keep them there.
- “That’s gotta be what’s suckin’ up all the magic in Equestria.” As a side note, I’m not sure this can be done just through the use of six artifact-level magic items. Affecting the Tree of Harmony must be involved, and that would imply knowledge Tirek definitely could not have: He was originally imprisoned before the tree was planted, wasn’t he?
- “We gotta at least try to get out.” Have you tried the window, Gallus? Or are those unbreakable too?… Notice, for that matter, that Sandbar himself enters via the window and uses a crowbar to pry it open.
- “I’m sure Twilight will know what to do with him when she gets back.” It sure is lucky Neighsay has no magic at the moment.
- “And as headmare of the School of Friendship, nopony will have more friends than me! Making me the most powerful pony in Equestria!” Why does this remind me of Key the Metal Idol?… Also, I wonder why would she want these marionettes of the Mane 6 in her office, other than for the Doylist illustrative purposes.
- “Oh, wonderful. I suppose you’ve all come to gloat?” Notice that Neighsay would have gotten out himself soon anyway: He successfully navigated his chair around the table to get at the seal in the trash bin. Notice the bin otherwise contains marked-up tests. Usually you don’t just trash those like that…
- “The E.E.A. medallion allows me to travel throughout Equestria.” I.e. one of its powers is a nation-wide teleport, as expected. I doubt it’s a unique item, at that, which makes me wonder why such artifacts do not appear to be in wider use.
- “Clarissa the pig has two tails, and while her singing voice is lovely, I don’t think it’s magical.” Just how exactly does a pig sing anyway?…
- Pinkie’s maneipulation is unaffected by magic drain. Neither is a chimera’s fire breath, even though all the other creatures appear to have lost the ability to use their powers.
- “But that is just what it will be! If my protege has followed my instructions, by sunset tonight, every last vestige of Equestrian magic will disappear into the ether forever!” Tirek knows exactly what Cozy Glow is doing, or at least he thinks he does and has no evidence to convince him of the contrary.
- “Exactly. It means you’re trapped here. Forever. With us.” Notice that dying is not a concern for some mysterious reason, even though all magic is apparently drained, including whatever could have possibly kept them alive.
- “I’m sure I can get the other monsters to help. Besides, I would never call them monsters.” Fluttershy is getting more and more two-faced as this season goes on.
“This is just like chapter twelve in ‘[???] Facts and Artifacts’ from Twilight’s class!”
- No, I can’t tell what Gallus is saying either.
- Notice how every student stops in front of an artifact originating in their particular culture, those that we know of.
- “Finals are coming up, you know?” School of Friendship, and presumably other schools in Equestria, has finals. Not a given, some school systems don’t use those.
- “Cozy must’ve linked these artifacts to act like a mystical magnet, attracting all the magic in Equestria into that orb.” Which should have fried Starlight to a crisp by now, shouldn’t it?
- “Destroy the School of Friendship?! Oh, dear! Chancellor Neighsay was wrong about a lot of things, but I guess he was right about all of you!” Now here’s a question… How exactly did Cozy Glow know the Student Six would be there? Twisting the last line into something she can sway the crowd with is ridiculously lucky, and them turning up just a few words earlier would wreck Cozy Glow’s case entirely. What exactly is going on here?
- Notice that while all the chimeric creatures used for Twilight’s scheme to open the door dissociate into component creatures, including the manticore, Tirek does not split into a horse and a… something. Also notice that they do not release the component creatures.
- “Technically, there’s a magical component when Silverstream and I transform.” We also know that griffons have native cloudwalking, don’t they? Never mind that there’s no way for dragons to be possible without magic. Or that the six artifacts contributed by the non-pony cultures are so bloody magical, they’re enough to create a nationwide magic drain.
- “And with magic gone from Equestria, I’m not even sure the Tree of Harmony will be as helpful as it once was.” The Tree of Harmony is definitely part of the school curriculum if Cozy Glow can say that and expect to be understood. Also, during this phrase, Cozy Glow somehow lost her crown, as it is missing from the next shot. It mysteriously reappears a few shots later.
- Funny how the chimeric creatures are restored to their chimeric nature through different magic than what was taken from them: that is with Twilight and got used to open the door. It’s like magic sometimes has an origin marker and sometimes doesn’t.
- “You’ve ruined everything! Now Twilight and her ridiculous friends can escape from Tartarus!” Looks like it takes at most a couple teleports for Twilight to cover the distance to Tartarus.
- “Friendship is powerful, but power isn’t why you make friends.” Actually, this is the way it works for most people who do make friends that I observe.
- The Royal Guard has definitely gotten rid of the regulation dye job, as in this scene we see them in a lot more colors than previously. We also see a female guardspony for the first time ever, as she is one of the two capturing Cozy Glow.
- “Now that we’ve saved Equestria, we figure we’re done with school.” Notice Spike coughing up scrolls with no apparent sender of said scrolls. This isn’t the first time he is doing this sort of thing. He definitely has some manner of pattern buffer suitable for this.
- “But she locked us in this closet!” Seeing as how they don’t look like they spent more than a day in there, that “practicing for graduation” came awfully quick.
- “As for Cozy Glow, I can assure you — where she’s going, she won’t be causing any more trouble.” Notice the complete absence of Cozy Glow’s parents in this scene. Also notice the use of Neighsay’s seal to get into Tartarus bypassing the gates and Cerberus.
Sense. What fun is there in making sense?
Some analysis
I can even. Which means that I no longer care as much as I used to.
- The depiction of Tartarus presented here makes no sense whatsoever, contains numerous internal contradictions, and I cannot, at present, offer an interpretation that will make it make sense. Maybe once you start commenting I’ll figure something out, but at the moment, I’m blank. There’s no way I can think of to reconcile the fact that Tirek and Cozy Glow can stay in contact by mail with inability to enter or leave, unless Cozy Glow already had powerful magic of her own even before she started this communication. And that’s just the most obviosly glaring issue, the rest of Tartarus makes no sense either. Remember how in A Celestial Advice, Celestia admitted that falling into Tartarus is a concern in Ponyville? I can’t imagine why that would be, either, as long as magic is working, getting Twilight out from this Tartarus would be trivial!
The contrast between Cozy Glow at her introduction, clueless and entirely unaware of really basic and obvious things, and here, makes me quite convinced she is not from around here, and probably is considerably older than she pretends to be. This is further supported by the fact that when she is imprisoned in Tartarus in the end, no parents are involved: A transformed alien simply wouldn’t have pony parents. The only alternative is to accept that Twilight’s school transformed an otherwise normal filly into a two-faced manipulative bitch, nopony even thought to take responsibility for this, and even her parents disowned her and let her get thrown into the only thing seen on screen that resembles a halfway proper prison, otherwise populated by outright monsters.
So riddle me this: Where is she from?
The entire magic drain scheme has a lot of issues, most of which I pointed out above, but to summarize:
- Tirek knew how to do it, but instead chose to hunt down ponies individually, wtf.
- There’s no way widespread disruptions in magic would not result in collapse of pony civilization and eventual famines and genocide, and yet Cozy Glow is entirely unconcerned. For that matter, Cozy Glow appears to be entirely uninterested in the magic itself, it drains somewhere else.
- It’s disturbingly easy to do. So easy that a pegasus filly can do it merely by getting access to six artifacts that are already in the same place.
- Somehow, pegasus powers remain untouched entirely, and so does maneipulation…
If this is done purely as a distraction to get Twilight trapped, this is extremely stupid, making everyone else even stupider for having fallen to Cozy Glow’s manipulation. There are much easier ways to get Twilight and company trapped and/or killed! Which makes me think it was Cozy Glow’s “official” goal, something she was sent to do, while being an “empress of friendship” was her personal ambition she expected to realize in the resulting chaos. That, however, still does not explain anywhere near enough – most importantly, why didn’t Tirek exploit the same kind of trick to eat all the magic in Equestria, or at least, to speed up the process without having to seek out Twilight.
Oh well. Time to get working on the Season 9 Bingo and the Season 8 chronology data for my chronotool…
P.S. Check out my hypothesis that sort of makes this episode make sense. Sort of. Maybe.
Or she quickly slight-of-hoofed that one, her latest letter from
Hannibal LectorTirek.I think it's obvious why she did this. However, though you might be tempted to think "Why would she tell someone she did that?" it is obvious she can use it as cover to go anywhere in the school she wants and keep track of what artifacts were there.
Notable that maybe Cozy Glow did this deliberately so that she would have some physical advantage.
Because magic is failing?
Interesting to note that Twilight knew—in advance—that she would need magic to get in, yet came anyway without any plan to get inside. A filly-guide, she is not.
Clearly, when a mailmare comes by to pick up Tirek's outgoing and give him his letters, they bring some snacks for the menagerie.
Again: Cozy Glow seems to have somehow left pegasai magic alone. Such a clever filly.
They honestly don't know. Sweetie Belle was trying to make toffee, and when a sheet hardened it seemed to be (as usual) inedible. But the CMC made thousands of bits selling the recipe to Filthy Rich as a composite, transparent, apple-proof glass replacement.
Woops, need to backtrack on one.
Notice when they meet Tirek, he does a strange little tongue thing. Combined with this plot of propagating a "new follower" via mail from prison, and we have the plot of Red Dragon (as well as a little confirmation—the tongue thing—that they knew what they were ripping off).
We've seen mailponies reach Discord on his own demiplane of chaos. Tartarus is a walk in the statue-filled park.
Or she is actually a diagnosed sociopath, and while lying she slips into character of "we ponies", but doesn't think of herself as "one of them" when she speaks candidly? Also explains why she didn't know 1st hand about Tirek's actual attack—she may have been institutionalized.
He was trashing things relating to the non-pony students earlier, likely he found some extra things.
Twilight has spent time in Pedestria, probably enough to learn how to make a modern syllabus. Awfully handy, that.
Supportive of the idea that Royal Guard armor magically disguises its wearer to fit one of the archetypal stallion looks.
The one thing that really hits me is at the end. All through the season Cozy Glow has been a silver-tongued wolf in pony clothing. She got her way, or got in the way, merely with a few careful words and a willingness to lie through her adorable little neck.
Given she was this master manipulator, that she could and would use lies to get what she want, what does that say for the fact that she didn't break down in tears at the end and claim she was sorry? She could have avoided her fate (going to Tartarus) by simply shedding some crocodile tears and saying sorry. Then at the end she is in Tartarus, grinning, in a cage beside Tirek. She wants to be there. She may have even engineered all this as a "If it works, yay, if it doesn't, I get to be right where I want to be.
4935510
That would imply the firefly lantern is entirely non-magical, which would be odder than an electric flashlight…
And haul away a cistern of manure or two.
Hence, ordering a newspaper subscription would be the best way to get out.
I don’t see any need whatsoever to believe that, when all the way back in Episode 1, Twilight says, “Let’s go, before she decides to dye my coat a different color.” Regulation haircuts, and restrictions on body type, are not uncommon at all in militaries, especially in special purpose exhibition troops, where a specific look is part of the job.
Her declared motives definitely don’t entirely match what she is actually doing, but I have said that much.
4935519
For the stallions, maybe. But a mare can't just dye her fur and feathers and hope nopony notices she doesn't have that square snout-look.
Hrm. The terrain around Tartarus looks a bit like that around that mountain cave that the snoring dragon in "Dragonshy" was rousted out of.
I had assumed that Cozy Glow was simply a dwarf or midget pegasus who made her way scamming ponies that think she's a filly - it's basically the back-story of Baby Doll, a Batman:TAS villain which some people think Cozy is based on. But a HiE or some sort of eldritch extra-dimensional monstrosity is an interesting theory.
I'm pretty sure that we're supposed to think that Derpy has been world-walking again, and is to blame for Tirek's unauthorized correspondence.
I have to assume that they just wrote the baffled management of Tartarus out of the script to simplify the story. Sorry if you send me to Doylist Hell for suggesting it...
The worst part of the episode was that undigested Star Swirl exposition dump, it was unnecessary, overly schematic, and was re-phrased anyways by Tirek in the second part, where characters talk as if they'd first been introduced to the idea by Tirek, instead of Star Swirl via Luna. It was really obvious that two different writers worked on the two different parts on that point.
4935521
Many militaries in our world do not recruit or draft women at all. Those that do, very often have gender-restricted units. There’s no in-canon reason to think Equestrian armed forces would be any different, except the various ideas of matriarchy or severe gender imbalance, which don’t pan out in canon as it stands now.
The idea that “Royal Guard is just the unicorn branch of the EUP” doesn’t work in the general sense if only because it included pegasi from day one. The idea that “Royal Guard is the entirety of Equestria’s military” doesn’t quite work either, because The Cutie Re-Mark. And you can’t attribute coat colors purely to magic due to the scene featuring the Royal Guard in the same episode.
I wrote about this, see RTAC #4
4935524
That was on the very top of the mountain though, wasn’t it?
It would certainly go a long way towards explaining why nopony bats an eye at a filly getting incarcerated in freaking Tartarus.
That’s FoME’s shtick, I’m not sure canon subscribes to this idea.
Doylistically, that would explain things. Watsonianly, it still leaves us with a steaming mess…
4935532 The other idea I had about that particular situation was that maybe, given that pegasus magic seems to be all that is now working, Celestia or one of her commanders deputized as many pegasi as possible into the Royal Guard, even those who don't fit the—ahem—entry requirements.
4935533
That’s possible and would make sense, but we did see the increased color variety as far back as The Cutie Re-Mark – so I think the idea that regulations got relaxed over the course of the series works better. For example, because Shining Armor is now married to a princess (Yes, he’s still Captain, somehow.) and nopony can tell him no anymore.
4935541 Not to mention a certain invasion that they were likely under-prepared for (though I don't know why).
I have made a point in one story, where Shining Armor and Cadance take a more firm stance to make the Crystal Empire its own nation, that Shining runs the Royal Crystal Guards with a lot more open entry requirements.
The least I can respond to before washing my hands of all of this.
No, he wasn't. Scorpan came to Celestia and Luna, who were in place as Princesses and alicornified, placing that event somewhere between whatever Starswirl did to create the Tree and Nightmare Moon.
You can't actually diagnose a child with ASPD. One of its prerequisites is that the patient exceed fifteen years in age.
Yup. That about sums up my feelings on the episode, too.
Given that our villain is a pegasus, I think it's safe to assume this is deliberate. If she can set up a ritual spell that drains all the magic in Equestria, she can probably add an exception clause or two.
I think it's worth noting that, whether Twilight had special authorisation last time or not, Celestia doesn't provide her with anything to open the door with this time, and Twilight didn't think to bring along that magic skeleton key herself. What was the plan here?
A few things to consider here.
1. The cages don't stop magic, so putting this cockatrice in a cage doesn't make it any less dangerous at all to the other prisoners or any potential visitors. They may as well have let it roam free for all the good this does.
2. The cockatrice apparently hasn't turned all the other monsters to stone already. So either the magic drain cures petrification, petrification doesn't work on monsters, or cockatrices aren't universally aggressive. I think the second is most likely, otherwise the cockatrice would have almost definitely petrified Cerberus at some point.
3. Is this the same cockatrice that attacked Twilight back in season one? I wonder, because I can't really think of any other reason that this cockatrice and no other would be chosen to be incarcerated in Tartarus. There are other cockatrices, right? And I can't imagine that the others would be any less dangerous. So what did this particular one do to deserve Tartarus, while the others all roam free? Even if the cockatrice is actually a unique monster like the Bugbear, which I doubt, you can apply the same question to the manticore.
I think the writers here confused "racism" with "stupidity." Granted, the two are often closely linked, but if Neighsay really is this much of an idiot, then how did he become the head of an educational authority?
I actually saw a fanfic once about exactly this. Better Lairs and Landscaping, it was called. Of course, that fic was a comedy, but according to this episode, it's basically canon.
Kind of a stretch, IMO. Sure, it would be weird if someone in real life said "you humans," but it would also be weird if someone in real life said "everyhuman." This just seems like a pony way of saying "you people."
Though, if Cozy were some kind of inequine monster in disguise, it would at least make the ending more palatable.
Personally, I really wonder why Tirek even agreed to help with this in the first place. When he drained magic before, it was to make himself more powerful. Cozy's plan doesn't help Tirek in any way whatsoever. In fact, it seems like it would be completely to his detriment were he to ever get out again. And speaking of, Cozy doesn't appear to have made any promises to free him, otherwise I doubt he would've betrayed her so easily. He doesn't even get revenge out of the deal, again because he betrays her and helps the mane six. Why is Tirek doing any of this? How does he benefit?
I've also got nothing. For a place named after the ancient Greek concept of Hell, this depiction of Tartarus was seriously disappointing.
I don't think that's the only alternative. Something else could've made her a two-faced manipulative bitch before she ever came to the school. Possibly Tirek, though more likely an abusive childhood. I don't know. Either way, whether she's more than she seems or not, we're still left with the fundamental problem that she has no backstory to explain any of this, so I guess any explanation we come up with is just as valid.
4935668
Scorpan also befriended Star Swirl, who disappeared defeating the Pony of Shadows immediately after planting the Tree.
Yes, I'm aware that this makes no sense with respect to Celestia and Luna being grown. Welcome to season seven.
4935693
Oh hey, it's you. I saw your argument with those other guys on the School Raze site post. I didn't step in because I don't like getting involved in internet drama, but I thought you made a lot of good points.
4935695
Thanks. Speaking of which, I should probably check on--
Nope. Nope nope nope.
4935694
No clear plan whatsoever. Perhaps the door normally requires a password, rather than a key, and the password-detecting lock does not work when Twilight cannot magically transmit it? Still not enough to fix this.
Amen. And the bugbear is not actually a unique monster. Doctor Time Turner says, upon seeing it: “Is that a bugbear?” Emphasis mine.
It’s pretty easy to become the head of an educational authority while being an idiot, but usually, it requires being a cautious idiot.
Precisely why I am seeking such an interpretation in the first place.
Unclear. Even if he’s bored entirely out of his wits, it’s doubtful he wouldn’t try to twist Cozy Glow into a pretzel.
"Sapphire Shores does concerts in Ponyville now, while previously, Canterlot was the smallest she’d go. She certainly isn’t doing all that well."
Hm, not sure we can say that, given that Ponyville has also likely been increasing in prominence in the same period. I mean, now it has a princess, a great big crystal castle, a school housing people with connections to important international figures, etc.
"Sense. What fun is there in making sense?"
Yeah, these episodes were, uh. Yeah.
"Tirek knew how to do it, but instead chose to hunt down ponies individually, wtf."
Maybe he wasn't capable of using it himself for... some reason?
"There’s no way widespread disruptions in magic would not result in collapse of pony civilization and eventual famines and genocide, and yet Cozy Glow is entirely unconcerned."
Well, the magic disruption as described. Given the magic disruption as actually observed, with all its holes, I'm not sure. But then, I'm also not sure why no one noticed "Wait, hey, pegasi can still fly and work with weather just fine" and the like.
"It’s disturbingly easy to do. So easy that a pegasus filly can do it merely by getting access to six artifacts that are already in the same place."
I don't think it was just that. Remember how in a previous episode she seemed to be interested in the Tree of Harmony's connection to the school's basement? I suspect that the location she was doing the magic in was important for more than just keeping it hidden.
"Which makes me think it was Cozy Glow’s “official” goal, something she was ]sent to do, while being an “empress of friendship” was her personal ambition she expected to realize in the resulting chaos."
Hm. I'm remembering this passage from Despoilers of the Golden Empire:
4935510
"Notable that maybe Cozy Glow did this deliberately so that she would have some physical advantage."
4935694
"Given that our villain is a pegasus, I think it's safe to assume this is deliberate."
Yeah, I thought of that, but they why didn't anyone notice? Starswirl seemed to have a pretty good understanding of the effects of the drain, but he doesn't even say "But pegasi will be fine" (which would be both useful and reassuring information to communicate), much less that that seems odd. Instead, everyone just seems to correctly assume that pegasi will keep their abilities.
4935719
"Unclear. Even if he’s bored entirely out of his wits, it’s doubtful he wouldn’t try to twist Cozy Glow into a pretzel."
...Well, this did end up getting Cozy Glow into Tartarus right next to him? Maybe he wanted her to fail, expecting this would happen and wanting it for some reason? 4935510 proposed that Cozy Glow had this as a desirable failure state in her plan, so... maybe the joint plan was one where each of them wanted a different outcome but had the other's preferred outcome as an acceptable, and most likely, failure state? I still don't know why either of them would want Cozy in Tartarus next to Tirek, though.
4935766
Point, but – you know how she first lost the title of the most famous pop star in Equestria to Countess Coloratura, and then to Songbird Serenade?…
The only one I can think of is that it requires these particular artifacts and not others. Although there’s no way that, in turn, would make sense – at most, it would rely on special properties of one or two artifacts, but not all six.
Even then, upon taking out the three alicorns, it would be a far superior option for Tirek to finish the job by getting hold of the artifacts and consuming all the magic while sitting on a throne, instead of hunting for Twilight.
Possible – I did mention that. However, how the hell did Tirek know anything about it, in this case?
Nice one and a possibility.
Maybe, but what kind of reason? Preferably one that doesn’t make it an even more questionable episode than it already is. He certainly doesn’t appear to enjoy others’ company in general…
4935774
"Point, but – you know how she first lost the title of the most famous pop star in Equestria to Countess Coloratura, and then to Songbird Serenade?…"
Ah, point. Apparently there's some churn there.
re Tirek's inability:
I was thinking more "Maybe centaurs can't do this, for some reason".
...Maybe only ponies can interface with the Tree of Harmony the right way?
"Possible – I did mention that. However, how the hell did Tirek know anything about it, in this case?"
How did he know about any of the components of this plan? I mean, I don't have an answer to that, either, but if we assume for the moment that there's something there, it seems plausible it would also cover this.
"Nice one and a possibility."
Thanks.
"Maybe, but what kind of reason? Preferably one that doesn’t make it an even more questionable episode than it already is. He certainly doesn’t appear to enjoy others’ company in general…"
Possibly some kind of escape plan? I don't know, particularly given the... quirks of Tartarus we saw this time.
4935766
Sorry, but Star Swirl is an idiot who was outsmarted by Flim and Flam, so I don't trust him to pick up on these details in the first place.
4935774
Actually, for this one, I kinda think the reason is character-based. As much as he's known for manipulation and betrayal and sneaking around, I think Tirek prefers to fight for his victories, so I could easily see him not using this method, even if he could. If you'll allow me a moment of pretentiousness, I'd like to quote myself from an old comment I made:
I spent over an hour searching around for where I made this comment, so you'd better appreciate it.
4935821
I appreciate it. Actions grounded in character usually fit stories better than actions grounded in logic.
But if I may offer an alternative: Tirek never used the artifacts in Twilight's Kingdom because they did not exist. The ancient artifacts poofed into existence in Season Eight, and could not be considered prior to that point.
4935848
Everything from season seven onwards is actually the real Star Swirl's self-insert fanfiction – little known fact.
Quite a rich episode from a setting point of view, even if kind of weird from a story.
I think this has to be hard locked after the three other episodes we've seen Cozy Glow in.
Nope, different mailpony with significantly different uniform in the same episode!
Twilight like re-organizing things, so is probably happy to let Cozy do the same (which she clearly did as an excuse to piler the 6 artifacts she needed).
I've discussed this with elsewhere, but it's only a fanon theory that Tirek actually sucked up all the magic from every single pony in Equestria. I looked back at the transcript, and at no point does it say Tirek took the magic of anyone off-screen. So Cozy could have just been outside of Appleloosa, Canterlot and Cloudsdale, and missed meeting him.
Luckily they actually address this later.
Or Starswirl just got his calculations wrong.
Do they have a choice? Actually, considering Twilight can't do anything with her horn after the first day, how is the sun even set at the end? I can't imagine Celestia fairing any better.
I think Luna or her Lunar guard or something were the ones going around grabbing all these monstrous creatures and sticking them in cages, which we didn't see before.
What about when they ran around all Rainbow powered-up and freed the 3 other alicorns from Tartarus?
Yup.
Maybe for cheap disposable bags Pinkie got a spell cast on them a few days ago by Twilight?
Or Ponyville is doing that well. I mean, Celestia played one of their amphitheaters a few months ago. Also, is Cozy embezzling school funds or something? How else does she buy an entire school concert tickets?
This seems like a good place to say I think I get Cozy's cute mark. It's a rook, since she's cheating or swindling everyone around her.
Yeah, that's a huge plot hole of this episode, which gets worse as time goes on. My guess is that Luna or someone is feeding these creatures and disposing of their waste normally.
He's a paranoid bigot, but I think the idea is that the school is chock-full of powerful magical artifacts, the students have been using them to steal magic, and if you throw them out of school they can't access the artifacts anymore. Or he's lying, assumes that Twilight or Celestia will fix this whatever the real cause is, and is just taking advantage of a crisis.
She told Sandbar which window is Apple Bloom's? Better question than why is the cow in this episode, why are the cutie mark crusaders?
Let's say the chamber pots, like most toilets, are not shown in cartoon resolution. Also the Equestrian mail service is clearly highly privatized. On the other hand, What if Cozy has been getting Spike/Smolder to bottle up some dragonfire, and sending some through more dragonfire with letters? As for why its not monitored? I mean, he's writing to the school of friendship, they assume nothing could be bad about that.
Oh yeah! Both the comics and his previous appearances have implied he doesn't actually know a lot of complex magic, but based on that rune this is obviously wrong. And the fact that he was able to help Cozy set up the runes as a trap to take out Starlight suggests he's aware of her capabilities.
The spell requires 6 powerful artifacts to function, and vents all the magic into the ether. He may not know of a way to consume all that magic himself. (Also, the ether is where Twilight imagined Starlight and Sunburst getting sucked into in the S7 opener, right?)
Yup. Unless you say unicorns enchanted those artifacts. Also supports the idea that Clover the Clever was an earth pony mage too.
That's really interesting. It implies that Equestria works like Xanth, where the magic was drained in an early novel and dragons turned into lizards, ogres into large humans, etc.
That's exactly what the rainbow laser of harmony does, and Rainbow Power essentially does the opposite of this spell. It might just be the 6 powerful artifacts are punching a hole between dimensions like Midnight Sparkle did, leaving a permanent drain for all those fast thaums from the moon.
The tree doesn't really seem to have any effect on Cozy's ritual aside from creating the space for her to do it below the school.
Interesting that Cozy doesn't want to become an alicorn or a princess or gain magical power, just lots of friends.
It's the official EEA medallion, I think it could be pretty rare. Like maybe Celestia spent a month enchanting it so the EEA could do random school inspections or something.
I have no watsonian explanations for this, only overwhelmingly doylist explanations.
At this point it's like 5 faces.
I think the idea is that Cozy as a villain has no scary powers, all her threat is in her quick thinking, ability to influence, and crazy-high bluff/diplomacy. This is the third or fourth time she's adapted on the fly to a setback in her plans and turned it to her advantage. That's the other side of having a chess piece for a cutie mark.
While we're at it, if those creatures are the same ones we've seen before, then that manticore was last seen being friendly towards ponies, and it was implied he would only harm them if he was manipulated into it by someone like Nightmare Moon. Looks like monsters don't have "innocent until proven guilty."
Based on the distinction between "magic" and "magical abilities," I think magic is only something that unicorns can do, even if other species are using the same energy source to do otherwise impossible things. And I think spells are not needed to enchant those artifacts, some kind of passive aura built up over time might be doing it.
If the show starts opening this can of worms they will regret it and the authors know this.
Also kind of jerky of the student 6. Last they saw the CMC they had sent them off to distract Cozy. Then no one sees them around. Then rather than try and find their friends they make themselves fake graduation outfits and practice graduating?
She might be, but no one else knows this. There's an explicit scene where the CMC confirm that both they and Cozy are still kids and the same age.
I don't think Equestria has a middle ground here. Cozy presumably is unwilling to apologize or show remorse, so Tartarus is the only option for her.
As for the changes in Tartarus, I can't figure out how mail works. My theory in general is this: We know SMILE used to deal with monsters like the Bugbear, but they were disbanded. We know Tartarus has recently changed, and we haven't seen those monsters in there before. What I think is that SMILE was trying to only lock up truly evil monsters, and was keeping them somewhere other than those cages. Then the Bugbear escaped where SMILE had it contained, perhaps a minimum security area of Tartarus, and Celestia disbanded SMILE, and basically told Luna to take their place (she watches over Equestria at night in addition to dreams, I think we've heard).
Perhaps Luna was going to originally be measured about this, but then the bugbear showed up in town and caused a huge panic. Ponies are still frantically worried about monsters (there are no timberwolves in the white tail woods!) So what does Luna do? Classic get-tough-on-crime tactics. She grabs every scary-looking monster, either personally or with the help of the Guard, and throws them in a cage. Maybe she puts automated enchantments on the spells to bring in food and remove waste, maybe they do other things, maybe Tirek can fiddle with those spells with what little magic he still had to corrupt them and use his waste-disposal spell to send letters instead.
But broadly speaking, Tartarus here reminds me a lot of Azkaban in Harry Potter. Most wizards didn't really come off as evil, but they made use of an evil prison.
Part of having a child villain is giving a bit of a pass on the villain being stupid about things like that. Plus probably Tirek convinced her ponies would adapt easily to no magic or something.
The fact that Tirek didn't do that suggests to me the magic gathered can't be eaten. Tirek's main goal wasn't to deny magic to others, it was to gain the magic for himself. I think if he'd stood next to that giant ball of magic and tried to absorb it, those hands would have just reached out and grabbed him as well.
Oh, you gotta publish the results of that!
4935510 Yup, the only way it makes sense for Cozy to end up in Tatarus instead of being reformed/forgiven is if she basically demanded to be sentenced to it, and has some plan to befriend everyone else in there to get an army of monsters.
The timeline of the magic loss is rather odd. Starlight Glimmer’s cloudwalking spell is the first bit of magic we see fail. After that, Starlight and Rainbow (and presumably the whole class from the field trip) have enough time to get back to the School of Friendship before Twilight Sparkle notices her own magic failed. In spite of the fact that Twilight was nearly at ground zero of Cozy Glow’s magic magnet, so you’d expect Twi to be affected first.
(Twi does use her telekinesis a few times in the episode’s cold open, before we see Starlight’s spell fail. Then in Twi’s very next scene, her telekinesis fails the first time she tries to use it.)
Rarity, also, notices her own magic failing sometime before Twilight. Long enough for her to rush from (presumably) her house and arrive immediately after Twilight realizes something is amiss. Whether Rarity’s magic failed before or after Starlight’s is difficult to say—we don’t know how far away Cloudsdale is today, and we don’t know how long Rarity spent trying to fix her tail without magic before giving up and coming to see Twilight.
Apparently either:
Also, the Key of Unfettered Entrance is basically a generic video game dungeon key: unlocks any door you stick it into, but disappears from your inventory after a single use.
4935510
4935694
Cozy Glow’s magic magnet is either a very distinctly underpowered version of Tirek’s magic-draining ability, or an entirely different spell with similar effects. When Tirek drained pony magic back in “Twilight’s Kingdom”, the ponies also lost their cutie marks, and most of their energy as well. Even the other alicorns, after giving their magic to Twilight for safekeeping, just lay in the throne room waiting for Tirek to come. But here, magic-drained unicorns keep their cutie marks, and they have enough energy to take a day trip to Canterlot, then another one to Tartarus. Tirek left ponies completely dry, and Cozy Glow just isn’t doing that, for whatever reason.
Probably because (as others have already mentioned) Cozy doesn’t want to lose her own ability to fly—and because her dream of being the Empress of Friendship doesn’t include ruling over a bunch of ponies too tired to do anything but lie around all day.
Another potentially relevant line from “Twilight’s Kingdom”:
Tirek needed to steal some arbitrary amount of unicorn magic before he could begin to drain the pegasi and earth ponies. Did Cozy Glow’s magic magnet (which wasn’t even fully draining the unicorns) even surpass that threshold? There are no hard numbers, so you can answer that however you’d like.
As for “How did Tirek come up with a plan involving magical artifacts he shouldn’t possibly know about?” and “If Tirek knew how to pull this spell off, why didn’t he just do that the last time he got out of Tartarus?”, well, Tirek doesn’t actually indicate that he knows everything about this plan. Though he does refer to Cozy following “my instructions”, he still attributes the plan to Cozy Glow and says all he did was point her in the right direction:
I suspect Cozy wrote to Tirek, asking about the theory behind magic draining and whether it would be possible to replicate the effect with magic artifacts. Tirek replied with a list of spell components.
Then Cozy wrote back to say “That won’t work because [magical artifacts x, y, and z] were destroyed centuries ago. What if I substituted [magical artifacts a, b, and c] instead? [Insert technobabble about these artifacts]”
“Yeah, that could work, but you’d need a stronger [technobabble] to compensate for the change in [technobabble].”
“What if I set up the magic circle near the roots of the Tree of Harmony? [technobabble about the Tree.] That would be strong enough, right?”
And so on and so forth, with Tirek basically double-checking the calculations on Cozy Glow’s own research, until the two pen pals successfully jury-rigged an alternative to Tirek’s spell. A weaker, artifact-based version, with a wider area of effect, and one that Tirek couldn’t have exploited before—because making the plan was as much a learning experience for Tirek as it was for Cozy Glow.
What I find galling about this scene is in the conversation Luna first says 'Somepony should investigate.' then there is the expectant pause where we wait for our beloved purple alicorn to volunteer herself. Then Luna replies with a line that suggests that she herself has been there recently.
So why isn't Luna herself going or at least going with Twilight. If Luna has more knowledge, and sees the necessity of going. I know the writer-reason is that you can't put Luna in the party because it splits the spotlight, but I'd argue it'd be just as empowering for Twilight to be co-princessing an adventure instead of being sent out like a Knight at their behest. It'd make her more of a 'princess princess' to quote Glimglam
Anything would be better than Luna and Celestia seemingly playing 'not it!' They could at least given us a cute picture of the princesses booping their own noses.
That said. Twilight's utter nonchalance about going to Tartarus even way back in It's About Time when she was happy to see Cerberus. I try to think that perhaps in her later years where she became more of a personal 'right-hoof' student to Celestia that perhaps she toured with her to places like this and saw the magic combo-lock on the Tartarus door or was taught it by Celestia (Somepony has to go round up dangerous monsters why not Celestia's Student-Knight)
I really hope she isn't a pony. But knowing the purpose of having Neighsayer in the episode was to redeeming his pony-centric racist views by showing that 'hey a ordinary practically foal pony can be a worst monster than any non-pony' it's likely she's who she is... a ultra precocious pony. I guess it could be worse. She could be another out for revenge unicorn with a tragic backstory.
It kinda hurts Chrysalis' own appearance in this season too as she seemly only existed to be a red herring and unable to enact her plan when a seven year old filly could.
Though notably Cozy has a cutie and she seems tiny. Is she even smaller than Diamond Tiara or Silver Spoon? Is she the youngest pony to have a cutie?
The writers have run out of divinity, intelligence, strength, and wisdom to strip from Celestia that they have to resort to strip-mining her morality too. The cheerfulness of her line, without an ounce of regret that she has to condemn one of her little ponies to a 3x3x3 box in a prison, really saddens me.
I can only hope that they are doing it as part of some kind of 'scared straight' program and plan to take her out after awhile and put her through an actual rehab Hell they could have at least try to rainbow raygun her or let Tree-Sparkle try one of her mirror-of-the-soul friendship boxes. Granted Cozy's own unwavering attitude and it not ending with her looking annoyed or bored or afraid in her cage, but a happy “Hiya neighbor!' I guess is suppose to nail down she's irredeemable?
I love this show. I love this fandom. I spend money on merchandise and commissions. I made hobby out of hours plotting and writing stories. I've sort of resigned long ago that finales will always be disappointing, usually because of pacing issues. But I think this one takes the cake for being disappointing because of bad pacing and bad writing. I hope they do better next season. Maybe end it with them going to the gala again. Huge sweeping adventures always seem to fall flat and give more opportunity for them to buck everything up than give us any fun situation or characterization.
4935694
He does say he helped Cozy because he was “bored”. In addition, I think he’s full of hate and has given up on ever escaping from Tartarus himself. He’s a monster who thinks he has nothing to lose.
So Tirek helps Cozy Glow with her scheme because he has nothing better to do, and if he can’t hurt the mane six himself, then helping someone else hurt them is the next best thing. You could say Cozy’s plan doesn’t help Tirek at all, but Tirek would say getting revenge on those ponies is help enough.
Then Tirek tells the mane six about Cozy Glow just to twist the knife in their backs—to hurt them even further with the knowledge that their own student betrayed them. It’s classic supervillain logic: he thinks the mane six are already defeated, so taunting them by giving away Cozy’s identity can’t possibly hurt the plan, right?
And at the very end, Tirek discovers that he actually does still have something to lose. Being stuck in Tartarus is bad, but being stuck with the mane six is even worse. They’re so irritating to him, it ruins what little joy he gets from their imprisonment. Suddenly, undermining the entire revenge scheme (rendering his own arc a shaggy dog story) becomes the least-bad option for Tirek.
4935693
There are childhood diagnoses in the DSM for sociopathy and schizophrenia, classically "adult" disorders.
4936059
And that would be relevant if those diseases were ASPD, but they are not. You can't reason or interpret by analogy in this field. It's not law.
(That was a not-so-subtle dig at my own poor life and career choices that involve embracing evil, sophistry, and Mammon instead of art, joy, and love.)
There is a child equivalent of ASPD called "conduct disorder," but its prognosis and indicated treatment are far different from ASPD, for what should be obvious reasons having to do with the state of the child brain's development and the outsize influence, compared to adolescent and adult brains, of environmental factors thereon.
4935821
"Sorry, but Star Swirl is an idiot who was outsmarted by Flim and Flam, so I don't trust him to pick up on these details in the first place."
Point about him, but that doesn't explain why no one else noticed? The rest of the Mane 6 don't even comment on Rainbow Dash flapping around and manipulating weather just as well as she usually does.
Hm, good point about Tirek's pride, though!
And I appreciate it. :)
4935915
"Luckily they actually address this later."
What do you mean?
4935923
re the threshold hypothesis for the observed magical abilities remaining:
Hm, aye, that sounds like at least a plausible mechanism; thanks!
(And nice hypothesis regarding the planning.)
4936114 My mistake, I thought the Pegasi stopped flying. I was referring to the seperation between magic and magical abilities, but the fact that Pegasi kept flying after beings lost their magical abilities makes that moot. Of course, I think the theory that the ritual was specifically built to exempt Pegasi also makes sense.
4935915
According to book they function just fine. Only Canterlot branch actually disbanded. Bon-Bon more or less a common grunt that don't know much about SMILE. Her boss tell her this directly.
4936153 Ah, good to know. The maybe the monsters in cages are from Luna working with the remainder of SMILE. Of course, that book also says Tirek is a coverup like the breezies, so I'll take it with a grain of salt.
4936164
IIRC part about cover-up said by some common agent, so... But maybe there is more about NMM, Tirek and others.
4936142
"My mistake, I thought the Pegasi stopped flying. I was referring to the seperation between magic and magical abilities, but the fact that Pegasi kept flying after beings lost their magical abilities makes that moot."
Ah, okay; thanks for the clarification. And yeah, that's what I thought too at first, that that would go when magical abilities did... but then it didn't.
"Of course, I think the theory that the ritual was specifically built to exempt Pegasi also makes sense."
Eh, I do still see holes in that I've mentioned elsewhere in these comments.
4935915
…beside the obvious.
Good question. How can the second day even come if the sun isn’t set at the end of the first, anyway? Why is the timeline worded in days rather than hours?
They only appeared very briefly and bypassed all barriers then, though…
You see, the problem with the cupcakes is that they normally dry out and become unpalatable much earlier than they actually spoil. High sugar content tends to act as a preservative, preventing bacteria not specifically adapted to eating it from growing.
Not a school, a class. That said, still a lot more tickets than you would expect.
I have something approaching a theory by now, but it still has a lot of holes, and I think it’ll have to be a separate post when I’m done…
It’s a Doylist question, so it has an easy Doylist answer: Because they’re Cozy Glow’s first friends and she needed to betray them to be properly reprehensible.
There’s no canonical indication dragonflame mail can be used this way, although it’s not an uncommon fanon.
She explicitly says “another realm.” “Ether” typically is not one. Also, it doesn’t actually start venting it until the very end – before that, it is a ball that definitely could be consumed.
Yet represented the unicorns in the unity. Why do you hate unicorns so much?
She’s going to become human again once she has 30000 friends, duh.
Ok, N-faced.
…damn, story idea. Fluttershy as the phantom thief known simply as “20 faces.”
Which makes it the Tyranny theory of magic as I said the first time this nonsense came up. A really bad idea to apply to ponies, to be honest.
Well, the CMC graduated already, what do they care?
Of course nobody knows, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to do most of the stuff she does.
I kinda have to, Shrink Laureate is planning to start a story contest based on this bingo.
4935919
You missed one:
Cozy Glow’s magic drain disrupts spells which consume more energy before it disrupts spells which consume less energy.
4935930
Unfortunately that isn’t on the list of writer priorities either.
Possible. In the deleted scenes of Rainbow Rocks, there’s an extended version of that duet between Sunset and Sci-Twi which kind of implies that this is the sort of thing Celestia’s Personal Student would be doing.
Only if they actually tell us so, until then, I’m free to ignore what the show crew says they meant because it never actually matches what the next show crew shot.
Scales of ponies are notoriously hard to compare, though…
Imagine that she’s aware it’s not one of her little ponies, but an alien thing, and smile.
Making the next season make less sense will be nontrivial.
But unfortunately, I have faith in them managing to do so.
4935919
Might possibly have something to do with being an alicorn as well. Celestia and Luna didn't immediately lose control of the sun and moon. They just said it was becoming harder.
4935923
Makes sense to me.
4935937
I mean, it's an explanation, but I don't like it. It makes Tirek seem really short-sighted for guy who once patiently waited a thousand years for an escape opportunity.
4936114
Sorry, but the mane six are idiots who were outsmarted by a small child, so I don't trust them to pick up on these details in the first place.
...I can probably use a variation of this statement for any possible character you could mention, come to think of it.
Grazie.
4936385
"Sorry, but the mane six are idiots who were outsmarted by a small child, so I don't trust them to pick up on these details in the first place.
...I can probably use a variation of this statement for any possible character you could mention, come to think of it."
...Sigh. Yeah, that, uh, is kind of true. I'd kind of like to find an explanation that makes them not idiots, though...
4936459
I would too, but sadly, this show sometimes leaves precious little room for any other interpretation.
4936254
Was it Discord? And/or where was Discord during all this? Was he in his chaos dimension and unable to access Equestria?
That might have been the goal. But compared to whipping up a frenzied mob to attack the non-ponies at the end, tricking the CMC and locking them in the supply closet feels more shenanigan-y than really reprehensible.
Well, we know Tirek didn't cast this spell himself, even though using it to consume magic makes vastly more sense than his actual approach, so it seems pretty logical there's some reason it wouldn't work for him. Maybe if he ate that ball he'd just get absorbed by the spell like Starlight did and flushed into another realm, or maybe something else, based on the complexity of the rune that looks like incredibly complicated magic.
I'd say another possible reason Tirek never used the spell was because he didn't have the artifacts to power it, except he was hanging around the old castle, which we know is chock full of artifacts. So maybe he could never cast the spell because it requires those 6 specific artifacts shown.
Because they call their spells "magic" instead of "unicorn magic!" Also because these earth pony and pegasi ritual castings remind me a lot of Dark Lord Sassaflash. One of the few good things about this episode, really.
To ponies as in just ponies, or as in all sapient beings on the world of Equus? Cause I agree it doesn't make sense for how regular magic items are created, but for the armor of legendary yak warlords it seems like the best option.
I don't see a ton of evidence for it, but the more I think about it the more I love this idea that Cozy is a human who quietly wandered through a portal. I'll assume she doesn't want to go back.
It answers the lack of parents. It explains why she's not that scared about no magic around. And her whole persona does come off like an adult human trying to pretend to be an adorable little girl, maybe an adult who actually watched Pedestria's equivalent of Shirley Temple movies and is basing her persona on that. Let's assume she went through the island portal, and then we just have to work out how she de-aged.
Just realized this now, the second portal between "earth" and "fantasy world" being on an exotic island feels like a Narnia reference.
No Spoilers! I know nothing going into this except that it's a mess for continuity/canon/analysis issues!
DERPY DELIVERING MAIL!
Her tragic backstory is that she inherited that hair from her bad OC parent.
Ponies have crosswords! I guess since they have newspapers, why not?
Shouldn't that be headmare?
There's enough of them that this was a task of note? Celestia lent like, five or so, where did the rest come from? Does every mystical fictional school just grow a pile of magical artifacts as it's around long enough?
Curious that Starlight's horn aura is displaying while this spell is up, I don't think cloudwalking required it before.
...So, we finally see a limit to Starlight's magic power! ...Or not.
It's obviously not Tirek. Only unicorn magic stopped, and he didn't do the magick-sucky-outy thing.
Wasn't he living in Las Pegasus last we saw him? How many ponies just fell out of the clouds and died offscreen just now? Darkest episode of MLP yet.
Which will be never, since noone will have magic left to make it set by the end of the second day. Okay, okay, MAYBE Starswirl is just being a dramatic wizard and it's actually X hours regardless of sunsets.
This whole exchange is weird. Sure, there have been a /few/ cases of Twilight going off to do things alone, but the group sticks together more often. Heck, four seasons ago the lesson was that SHE should go with THEM!
Kids don't talk like that Cozy Glow. I am surprised they're not taking Starlight, though. They're going to need every Knowledge Pony they can get for this. Let Rarity run the school or something.
Well, somecreatures are excited to prove how friendly they are. And entirely missed the original point. Uh... guess we all roll a 1 sometimes.
Okay, really interesting to learn that ponies routinely use food preservation spells, but given you knew unicorn magic was failing why didn't you pack something that kept better?
A cloud is being used to keep off the rain. The irony.
Where did she get the money for that? I suppose the school's treasury can last a little while, but Cozy's obviously not worried about maintaining things... or maybe she stole it from Twilight's castle...
Woah woah woah woah, hold the phone, I thought we were still on day 1! The sky is night, and it can't be, because by the end of day two there's no magic to lower the sun! And Rainbow Dash couldn't have moved that cloud!
Uh oh.
First of all, why did it fit into Tartarus's door, and second of all, HOW DO YOU NOT MAKE SURE THE DOOR STAYS OPEN?!
Wow, way to make us go 'A-HA! She was working for HIM the whole time!' and then immediately show that's not the case. Well played, writers!
The manticore is in Tartarus now?! What'd he do?
On whose authority? Although, all authorities right now are probably pretty busy. Makes you wonder why this guy isn't, actually, what with being in charge of overseeing schools full of students losing their magic already. And the first thing he does is ignore his actual responsibilities to come HERE to mess with some unaccredited school? Amusing that Cozy Glow now has to contend with another villain, though!
Fluttershy's ability to talk to animals, pegasi's ability to fly despite their tiny wings: Not magic, apparently?
You're a quick one, Cozy! That's one way to distract the other villain... does this mean you don't need the non-pony students for your own plan, then?
Sandbar's suddenly clever too!
Tirek had better be lying about this penpal business. Surely Celestia would have his mail screened, right? Right?
So she's NOT a pony! She's not exactly wrong though, of course friendship is power.
Calling it now, Cozy Glow is a human in Equestria, turned into a little filly (as is wont to happen) and she decided that instead of just hanging around with the Mane Six she'd steal magic itself for Earth and then reign over it as the first magical empress!
I'm kidding, but it makes sense so far, doesn't it?
Man, Cozy's had a chessmaster cutie mark this whole time, hasn't she?
There's just something about that sentence.
Oh man, that's right! How DID Cerberus escap-- oh we're not doing that. Okay. We're stealing the very magic that makes up these creatures to power our own. I mean, Cozy was able to use the artifacts to trap Starlight, so sure, I guess it sounds plausible, and desperate times do call for desperate measures, but wow, this is pretty shady stuff for a children's cartoon protagonist to resort to! I'm just surprised though, it's not really a problem.
One of you could throw something to see if you can dislodge the artifacts, but maybe that's a bad idea with magic rituals like this.
But not try so hard that you smash that glass window behind you. A door lock? Seriously? Yona could just smash it. You guys were only trapped when that magic chain restrained you (it wears off?) Without it, escaping is a piece of cake. I suppose it's possibly they actually didn't realize what Sandbar was up to and are so disheartened they're not thinking straight. But then that would imply that fragile walls remained standing around an upset yak. ...Oh okay she was waiting for him to come back.
HOW DID THE SUN COME UP?
Wow Cozy Glow is a master diplomancer.
What studies? They have no teachers! Cozy Glow can only teach one class at a time, and she also has her evil plan to attend to!
Okay going back to my joke theory for a moment, what if the human in question is Princess from the Powerpuff Girls? But then, could she really be patient enough to pull this plan off? Once she got to Equestria she'd have no choice, though...
Obviously horn-lock-picking is yak magic, which is themed around destruction. It would even be plausible if everycreature's magic wasn't already lost by now.
They're not out yet? Well, it's day 3, so the creatures have no magic to take. What's your plan B, folks? ...Your plan B is to ignore that. Okay. Well, maybe Starswirl was wrong.
When did the chimera get captured?
You just did. Twice.
Wow. Is Cozy Glow an actually competent villain? I'll just assume that door locks.
Holy shit, the workings of this plan are so easy first-year students can figure it out after reading part of one textbook?! And nopony thought of this possibility? You'd think mages would have set up some kind of artifact to detect this centuries ago, and the diarchs would have it!
Holy shit. All the magical creatures are hybrids sustained by magic, which can be removed from them to turn them into normal creatures?! This... this is heavy, Doc. The ramifications... I don't even know where to begin! Although, if this is the case, why lock these 'monsters' up here instead of just demagicing them?
What does Tirek become without magic?! Let us see!
...No change. Oookay.
WHO IS LOWERING THE SUN?! SERIOUSLY?
So what just happened with the tree?
Oh, NOW Twilight remembers she can teleport long distances. With passengers.
Okay, seriously, what is Cozy Glow?! ...Then again, perhaps 'you ponies have it all wrong' was more the same way a human would say 'you people have it all wrong'! Damn. So she's actually just a little kid who's really good at scheming?
Celestia is there, so who's sending scrolls to Spike?
Ah, the closet is equipped with a lock sensitive to comedic timing.
Holy *buy some apples!*, they're LOCKING UP A LITTLE KID? Is this... is this really a kid's show? Is this just a short term thing, like, throw her in Hell for a day to scare her and then try to reform her? What is going on here?!
Well, she'll certainly become queen of Hell soon enough. Or she would if it were run by demons or something rather than just being a bunch of cages. Bet she charms whoever comes to feed them all, though...
<-- Oliver
So they can't infiltrate pegasus cloud cities. Interesting...
I figure the party unicorns cast the spell on them offscreen out of habit. Although as pointed out above, to do this without realizing the spell would break? Hmm. Maybe it's a long-duration spell cast on the bags. Which not only keeps things cold, but also keeps air from making them stale...
Now that's character development!
He didn't just expel them, he locked them up in a room so they can be interrogated later. He intends to keep the school running without magic, and figures sooner or later he'll get the truth out of them so the process can be reversed. You'd think he'd use his amulet to go alert some backup to interrogate the student five while he runs the school, though...
I bet it's been passed down from racist to racist since the days of unicorn superiority, and its creator didn't want anypony else to be able to use it.
I bet Neighsay subscribes to pony versions of all those theories pale-skinned humans had about why the other races were inferior for "scientifically factual reasons" last century.
Agreed!
He wanted it all for himself. It's not clear that he could actually consume magic taken this way -- notice that it didn't desaturate ponies, and some of their abilities kept working. I'm... I'm not sure WHAT would've happened with Cozy Glow's plan, now. When I thought she was another creature disguised as a pony, taking all the magic back to her homeworld made sense. But if she's a pony... What's the point? She was going to sacrifice everyone's magic just to trap Twilight in Tartarus?
Of course, all this 'all magic in equestria' business is pretty vague, anyway. Neither Tirek's nor Cozy Glow's method broke up the magical creatures, for instance.
SEE? It's the obvious theory!
Sadly, with Cozy Glow turning out to apparently just be a pony, this is indeed the only reason for draining the entire world of magic I can think of.
It's not affecting the tree, though!
I bet Neighsay just trashed all of Twilight's paperwork without looking. Her un-accredited tests are meaningless to him, anyway. In retrospect, Cozy Glow made a real idiot move here, not taking the seal for herself...
It might be unique, and if it's not, the E.E.A. probably got some legal bullshit passed. Remember, they're so powerful that Celestia doesn't speak against them during the season opener.
Very well, she just told you!
Look at that cutie mark. Manipulating people is Cozy's special talent, and those don't seem to have been affected by the magic drain.
Maybe mailponies have these artifacts too. At least some of them.
Hmmmm...
To get revenge on the Mane Six by trapping them in Tartarus. He was so focused on that he didn't think about how that would mean spending time with them together in Tartarus.
I can only guess that Twilight is genre-savvy enough by this point that she figured she and her friends would come up with something. The power of friendship!
A lot of people suggesting that pegasi being unaffected was deliberate. And that it raises its own problems if it was.
I'm not so sure. If anything, seems it was a bad location, given the deus ex arborea at the end...
You've got a good point there.
Not necessarily. He could've just said 'By the way, the magic orb will suck up anyone who gets too close, so, y'know, if anyone tries to stop you, lure them into touching the artifacts.' And Cozy surely has the manipulation skills to trick Starlight into that. ('No! Don't! You'll disrupt my spell!')
I need to learn how to do those arrows. It didn't work right last time.
Howard035's explanation of Tartarus makes more sense than anything I can think of.
Meta Four's thoughts about Tirek and Cozy developing the magic drain together is interesting, but still, whatever it was was so obvious someone who read part of one textbook could figure out the principle...
That's a neat idea but did the Student Six ever actually tell Twilight the full details of this? Although, the tree is Harmonious, not necessarily Good...
We know that Tirek could drain unicorns, and then with enough power, pegasi, earth ponies, and draconequus as well. Nowhere have we seen any evidence he can eat big magic orbs. I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about Tirek's pride though -- even if he couldn't consume the orb of magic, it might've been less risky to drain magic this way and then absorb what was left in ponies. But that's not his style.
All-in-all...
There is SO MUCH potential with this episode. Cozy Glow potentially being some new alien being. A way for non-unicorns to do magic. A new threat for Equestria, and a new villain who gets by just be being an amazing manipulator. Equestria's government actually coming together when Neighsay goes to get help. Equestria's magical beasts are actually hybrids held together by some kind of magic.
So much potential. But it falls apart the more we think about it. Things are in tartarus that shouldn't be, and infrastructure that should be (and is required and referred to in-story with the whole 'pen pals' bit) aren't.
It feels like someone had great ideas and then nonsense decisions were made along the way. "So, what should be in Tartarus besides Tirek?" "Uhhh... I dunno. Monsters, I guess? The ones from previous episodes, they'll be recognizable." "So, what should Cozy Glow be?" "Oh man I am not making up more stuff, and we're out of time and budget for art assets, just have her turn out to be a pony after all." "But then Celestia's throwing a kid in jail..." "Kids won't think about it, just like they didn't think about how horrible it was for the ponies living under Discord, or how scary it is that your friends could go play in the woods and get turned into statues."
I'm so used to the latter at this point just being a given, that I find myself liking the episode anyway based on the former. They're nigh-always going to mess up in the world-building and consistency department, at least the ideas they messed up were pretty interesting this time!
Two additional notes:
After learning about Cozy Glow, Neighsay teleports to warn the Princesses. And they actually mobilize the military! So why didn't he do this after magic-chaining the Student Five?
I wonder if this episode started out as the writers' own response to what Oliver talked about in that Scar Tissue post. Part of the plot and some lines fit really well with a HiE out to steal the world's magic for Earth. But then of course, they couldn't actually do that, and so had to change it later... I suppose we'll never know.
Edit: New joke theory: Cozy Glow is the result of Being X sending another nonbeliever to a magical world to torture them with saccharine sweetness.
Additional thought: Does aspiring to 'Empress of Friendship' mean she'd be in charge of friendship in a single walled city?
4936822
To a pony, very probably. To a human, though…
4936819
Just click on the “»” symbol on the upper right of whatever post you’re replaying to. It’ll insert “>>[some number]” into the reply field, which will display as the correct name when you post. If you want to reply to multiple posts, then hold Control (or Shift if you’re on an Apple) as you click, to prevent the screen from auto-scrolling to the reply box.
You know, it's disturbingly easy to build a nuclear reactor in your own home...
Makes ya think they're just throwing shit at the wall without thinking about it too much, eh? :V
Equestria has not invented networking. :B
4952526
Frankly, this has been my conclusion for at least the past three seasons.
The changelings used firefly lanterns in Ocellus' flashback in "The Hearth's Warming Club", I believe.
It just occurred to me a possible reasoning for the ending. They put her in Tartarus because that's where her only real friend lives. It's something just idiotic enough to be plausible.